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Listening outside yourself: mastery of collaboration

May 25, 2004 By Collaboration, Music, Practice

Every couple of weeks I sing with an evensong chorale, singing Gregorian chant and other liturgical music for a meditation service at one of our local churches. The whole experience is deeply spiritual for everyone who comes, including (and especially) the singers. Over the past few years we have focused on how to collaborate on a level that befits the experience we are trying to generate for the congregation. And it really comes down to sustaining flow.

Our director Alison Nixon, who thinks a lot about these things, usually has some wisdom to impart to us each week. On Sunday she said this:

“When you are singing you need to listen to others in much greater proportion than you are listening to yourself. Probably on the scale of 80 percent listening to others and 20 percent listening to yourself. That way you connect more fully with what is going on around you and the choir comes together.”

This small direction created a remarkable change in what we were doing on Sunday which was Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus (.mp3; not us!). When a choir is learning a new piece, people can be so into their own parts that nothing comes together. But choral music is all about the unity of voices, and so it will never work unless the parts blend. Only by listening outside of ourselves can we give attention to the whole.

Music is a great practice field for exploring what it means to bring a particular individual mastery to a collaborative project. Mastery of a particular set of skills is useful in a collaborative environment only if one also has a sense of how to fit those skills into a bigger whole, so that instead of eight voices, there is only one sound.

Pushing Monks, maintaining awareness

May 23, 2004 By Uncategorized

Got this great little piece from Killing the Buddha by way of wood s lot:

“I got a job pushing monks into the ocean. The monks don’t seem to mind, and the abbot says that my threat promotes awareness. So I’m sitting here on my observation chair, watching the mainland recede, working on my peripheral vision. Not that the monks are fast. They are at peace in walking meditation, so I don’t want to interrupt the cadence so much as divert it, shuffle out into the hot sand, barefoot and cringing, and see if the monk notices my presence. If he turns and nods, I back away. But if he is lost in thought? Whoosh. Most of them surface facing up, smiling. Sometimes — and this is part of their beatific appeal — they gurgle. ‘To drift is to return,’ as the abbot would say.”

There is a difference between being lost in thought and meditating that opens one’s awareness. In meditation, as in other activities in which the flow state is so important, one must remain in contact with the environment, in fact the purpose of the activity is to enhance connections with the environment, both inner and outer.

To do this, to have this luxury of developing a practice that expands our awareness, it is necessary to embrace the external reminders of the real world, for those are ultimately the things that seed our practice.

For more on Buddhist perspectives on working with our own reactions to disturbances outside of us, have a look at the practice of lojong mind training, a practice of working with the messiness in the world by developing our own compassion. Especially useful in this respect is Pema Chodron’s book, Start Where You Are.

The Great Eastern: Newfoundland’s Cultural Magazine

May 19, 2004 By Uncategorized

For a while in the mid nineties, CBC ran a satire called “The Great Eastern” which billed itself as “Newfoundland’s Cultural Magazine,” aired by arrangement with the fictitious Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland. While looking for something else, I stumbled over their website, featuring a bunch of episodes:

“The Great Eastern–Newfoundland’s Cultural Magazine, started as an hour-long summer replacement on CBC Radio in 1994 and since 1996 was a half-hour program on the regular Saturday morning schedule. Despite critical acclaim and a dedicated fan base, the CBC effectively cancelled the show after the 1998-99 season, further alienating the thousands of listeners out there looking for something intelligent, well-written, and above-all funny on the radio dial.”

This was one of the best shows ever to air on the CBC in the mid nineties. Absolutely brilliant writing, and very subtle humour. Very much in the British tradition (see People Like Us, for example). Rumours are that the GE crew will be back in some guise in the summer, but not as The Great Eastern.

Linkage

May 18, 2004 By Uncategorized

Another installment of linkage for your perusal:

Cool job with the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of BC

May 18, 2004 By Uncategorized

Just got a phone call from my friend Mike Mearns, who is the Executive Director of the Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of BC, an organization that supports First Nations financial and management capacity through training and workshops. They are looking for an Executive Assistant, but don’t let the job title fool you. The main duties are developing training materials and organizing workshops for First Nations administrators working “at the coal face” as it were:

“The Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of B.C. (AFOA-BC) requires an Executive Assistant to provide support to the General Manager and Board of Directors. Our association is established to represent the interests of its membership in areas of First Nations financial management and administration. Duties of this position will include office administration, education and training event coordination, membership communication and coordination.

As a large percentage of job duties include support in adult financial/administration training and education we require you to have a degree or diploma in business administration or education. As well, we require 3-5 years experience in providing assistance to a manager and board of directors in areas of training conference/seminar management and adult learning. Suitable candidates must have excellent computers abilities including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Access. Accounting knowledge and skills will also be an asset in providing support to the association. Knowledge of and previous work experience with a First Nations organization is preferred.”

There may be those of you out there who have an interest in facilitation. adult learning, management and administration training and First Nations issues that might want to consider this one. The competition is closing very soon, and they are still looking to fill out their candidate field.

Contact Mike through the AFOA website and let him know I sent you.